To be Filled
by Katia-chan
Summary: She grieves for that empty place inside her. [Pregnancy. and 97 Akito, in case we still have to warn for that]


Notes: I'm sticking my head out of my writerly hole again. Grad school is still hard writing is still hard. I wrote this like a month ago, and kept tinkering with it because it just wasn't right yet. And then decided, while attempting to write a conference paper, that if I didn't let it out into the world I'd die before I finished the stupid thing. So here it is; enjoy. I still don't write plot. And the characters are not my creations. I'm just playing with very excellent toys someone else lovingly made.

Also I'm shameless and desperately in need of validation. So if you enjoy this, let me know. Like, you don't have to, but I'm pathetically addicted to having people say nice things to me, and it fills me with happiness. You can say things if you don't like it, too.

To Be Filled

By Katia-chan

The splintering of glass, as the tea cup hits the wall, is harsh in the silence of her room.

It's been a long time, since her rage and her fear replaced her reason, and she had to scream, or throw something, or else choke on the caustic furious terror that threatened to drown her.

She throws another cup. But she doesn't scream. She doesn't want anyone to come.

They'd helped her, when everything was over and she started living as herself. It was harder than she'd expected; she'd always thought Ren was the only thing standing in the way of the change. But it turned out that there was a lot more, and the whole process had been stumbling and embarrassing. But she'd learned, slowly, to manage, and to feel comfortable, with herself, with the others, with the world that had changed so much while she clung kicking and screaming to the past.

But there were certain conversations that just got... missed. She wasn't a teenager, and it wasn't like she hadn't had sex before, and for all he was comfortable with so many uncomfortable things, Hatori apparently had just not had it in him to have a conversation about what could happen _iafter/i_ a man and a woman loved each other, and neglected birth control.

So it was so much longer than it should have been, before she suspected something was wrong. Having poor health her whole life, she was used to her body behaving strangely, and to aching in all sorts of strange places. And several weeks of nausea hadn't raised much of an alarm, either. It wasn't until Ayame and Mine had come for a visit, with one very loud daughter in tow, and Mine huge and ungainly with their second child, that things had started to add up. She'd have felt better about things, if she'd realized it herself, maybe. But it was Mine who had pulled her aside, while their husbands were making fools of themselves, and had asked, smiling, if Akito had a secret.

The real secret, she had reflected, as she stood in the bathroom panicked and sweating, test in hand, was that what she wanted more than anything else in the world was for this not to be, for this thing to be sucked right out of her body at any cost.

When Tohru had told her about their first child, she had been beaming with joy, bouncing in a way that had been very distracting. Yuki and Machi's announcement had been less athletic, but they had still seemed... happy. Standing in the bathroom, she had tried to imagine telling any of them about this, being congratulated, being touched. It turned her stomach.

She throws a dish. She bites so hard on her lip that she tastes blood. And she wonders if this is how her mother felt.

Observation had shown her that you were supposed to be happy, when you had a child. You were supposed to want to be even more wonderful to it than your mother was to you, and to give it everything and love it unconditionally.. But she's learned that those are terrible promises, ready to be broken. And Ren had certainly never felt those things. Perhaps she wouldn't, either. She certainly didn't now...

Her nails break the skin of her palms as she clenches her fists.

She had been learning. It was finally becoming natural to be her. She wore the clothes, and she'd grown her hair. Her body felt like her own, for the first time. She was _becoming... something_.

But not now. It's all too much, it's too fast. She was just starting to know herself, for the first time. And now there was this... thing, creeping in like icy water that fills every part of her, takes all the space she's finally hollowed out inside herself, the space she wanted to grow into.

It's gone, full, the space where twelve had lived filled to the brim with one, and it's still not her.

She's crying, silently, when Shigure finds her. He's not accustomed to this kind of carnage anymore, and his look of frightened concern is uncharacteristically genuine when he enters and finds her kneeling in front of a pile of shattered glass, sobbing and incoherent.

He holds her, without a word. For all their differences, and all their difficulties, he understands her, or at least, understands that he doesn't understand, and he just lets her cry, huddled against his chest like she's done her whole life. Later, he asks what's wrong. But she doesn't explain. She can't.

She'll tell him, days later, when she can deliver the news with no feeling. And the fact that he's... happy, the way he holds her that night, not like a child at all, eases something inside her, just a little. And when, at his prompting, she talks to Tohru, she starts to think that perhaps this is survivable after all. There's an old proprietary place inside her that yearns for the unconditional love that's coming, and a softer, gentler part that's happy at the idea of being someone's mother, and maybe everything won't be better, but some things will be. She might not have to lose herself. And it might be... good.

But tonight, she keeps her secrets, and asks to sleep alone, and wishes that things were different.


End file.
